Opposition to toll roads dominates dialog at TCA forum

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South county residents assemble signs in a designated free-speech area at Saddleback College outside the Transportation Corridor Agency’s June 5 public forum on mobility. Signs were not allowed inside. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

South county residents assemble signs in a designated free-speech area at Saddleback College outside the Transportation Corridor Agency’s June 5 public forum on mobility. Signs were not allowed inside. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Pamela and Jeff Braunstein of Ladera Ranch display a banner opposing the “Beltway” transportation option, which residents say would negatively impact Ladera, Rancho Mission Viejo, San Juan Capistrano and Mission Viejo and would be an east-west alignment, not a north-south alternative to I-5 sought by TCA. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Attendees listen at a Transportation Corridor Agency forum on mobility, held June 5 at Saddleback College. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

This San Clemente softball group performed “no toll road” cheers outside a June 5 Transportation Corridor Agency forum on South Orange County mobility. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The Transportation Corridor Agency took notes from panel discussions at a mobility forum held June 5 at Saddleback College. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

From left, Alana Sayer, Sophia Noble, Katie Faris and Molly Moe were among many interviewed outside a June 5 transportation forum by getmovingoc.com for the Transportation Corridor Agency’s mobility study. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A panel consisting of former state legislator Richard Katz, Transportation Corridor Agency CEO Mike Kraman and Endangered Habitats League CEO Dan Silver discusses a lawsuit settlement that established an “avoidance area” south of San Clemente (pictured) near Trestles Beach where the TCA cannot fund or build a road. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A surfboard carried by San Clemente High School student Jackson Hinkle was among anti-241 Toll Road signs displayed by residents in a designated free-speech area outside a June 5 Transportation Corridor Agency forum on mobility. Signs were not allowed inside the forum. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

People who were unable to submit questions at a June 5 Transportation Corridor Agency forum on mobility were invited to submit them online. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

People attending a June 5 Transportation Corridor Agency forum on mobility listen to panelists at Saddleback College. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

• No agency is likely to ever try to build a traffic link from Orange County to I-5 south of San Clemente – a route that the TCA promoted for decades as the most effective way to relieve I-5.

• A December lawsuit settlement between the TCA and environmental groups scuttled any south-of-San Clemente option, suddenly thrusting four other potential links to I-5 into the forefront in a TCA mobility movement. All of those are being opposed in communities they would impact.

• The TCA is committed to exploring the feasibility of those four links, together with 14 other ideas under study.

An overflow crowd of South County residents turned out for the mobility forum, many of them clearly hostile to the TCA’s efforts. Ed Sachs, chairman of the TCA’s board of directors, appealed to the audience and to live-stream forum viewers for continued participation and understanding.

“There is no one answer and one solution that’s ready right now,” Sachs said. “We’re still in the stage of trying to discover and understand what the mobility needs are.”

Mike Kraman, the agency’s CEO, said that analysis of the 18 ideas is under way to weigh the costs, benefits and impacts of each. He cautioned that it is early.

“At this point, we may not have the right solution,” Kraman said, whereupon people in the audience chorused, “You don’t.” Many in the crowd applauded.

Analysis of the 18 ideas could continue into 2018, when the TCA board could decide on possible options to convert into a transportation proposal. That would trigger a year or more of technical studies of alternatives, including a public participation process.

The TCA did not allow signs inside the theater where two panels were discussing mobility. Attendees, including many who could not go inside because online RSVPs had reached capacity a week earlier, displayed signs outside in a designated free-speech area. Some placards opposed a particular potential route. Other signs opposed a 241 extension anywhere in South County.

There was almost no discussion about the mobility ideas other than toll roads – bikeways, rail expansion or signal synchronization, for example. Some questions from the audience focused on the December lawsuit settlement, which preserves the Trestles Beach area but now puts pressure on existing communities to accept a toll road, spurring opposition in San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Rancho Mission Viejo and Ladera Ranch.

Dan Silver, CEO of the Endangered Habitats League and a forum panelist, said that the lawsuit settlement preserves some of the area’s most valued habitat and recreational resources.

“Our campaign was never about stopping all transportation improvements, nor was it about stopping a toll road per se,” Silver said. “It was always about protecting certain things. None of us are going to wake up 10 years from now one morning and find that the TCA is making another run at things.”

The state has acknowledged the settlement, ensuring that two of the 18 ideas will not be built, either by the TCA or Caltrans, Silver said. Those two ideas – an alternate 241 alignment to San Onofre and an arterial road extending Avenida La Pata south from San Clemente to Cristianitos Road – were part of the TCA’s mobility study when the settlement surfaced. They will be analyzed anyway.

Valarie McFall, the TCA’s chief environmental planning officer, said that an alternate alignment farther south into Camp Pendleton suggested by some would require military approval. She said the Marine Corps has made it clear that the only alignment acceptable was one that the Coastal Commission rejected in 2008, bordering San Clemente, and anything farther south would encroach on the base’s training mission.

Silver said the settlement agreement was a TCA acknowledgment that the Trestles area watershed south of San Clemente is a resource to be avoided and that no proposed road there would stand a chance of winning permits.

In reaching the settlement, the environmental groups agreed not to oppose any proposed TCA alignment outside a designated avoidance area. Silver urged the forum crowd to remain engaged in the process and work toward transportation solutions.

When he pointed out that one of the required options in environmental reports is the “no-build” option, many in the crowd applauded.

Many in the audience appeared to be from San Clemente, opposing either of two suggested 241 Toll Road routes that would bisect the beach town. San Clemente voices repeatedly challenged points made by forum panelists.

The prospect of an east-west connection of the 241 to I-5 and the 73 Toll Road drew questions from a Ladera Ranch/Rancho Mission Viejo group challenging how that would improve north-south I-5 mobility, the TCA’s stated goal in the study.

Kraman said the TCA will have to run an analysis to see if such a connection provides “any relief to the problem that we’re trying to solve.” He said it was the latest option added to the study, and the TCA added it at the city of San Clemente’s request.

There were groans in the audience when McFall suggested that Los Patrones Parkway, now under construction in Rancho Mission Viejo as a public road along a former 241 alignment, could convert to a toll road.

There also was a question from the audience asking how the TCA could ruin San Juan Capistrano ridgelines that the city worked for decades to preserve.

McFall suggested, in response to a question about double-decking I-5, that it could become an option, albeit one with visual impacts.

The forum ended with group chants of “no toll road!” as people filed out of the room.

Kraman, asked about costs to the community of various options, said “it’s hard to put a cost on something that we are just starting to study. I’d say there’s an equal question the other way – what does the lack of mobility cost our communities currently and into the future?”

Fred Swegles grew up in small-town San Clemente before the freeway. He has covered the town since 1970. Today he covers San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano. He was in the second graduating class at San Clemente High School, after having spent the first two years of high school in double sessions at historic Capistrano Union High School in San Juan. When the new high school opened, he became first sports editor of the school paper, The Triton. He studied journalism and Spanish at USC on scholarship, graduating with honors. Was sports editor of the Daily Trojan. Surfed on the USC surf team. (High school surfing didn't exist back then.) With the Sun Post, he began covering competitive surfing from the mid-1970s, with the birth of the the modern world tour and the origins of high school surf teams. He got into surf photography and into world travel. Has surfed on six continents (not Antarctica). Has visited 11 San Clementes. Has written photo-illustrated profiles on most of them, with more in the works.